"I'm going to teach you how to fly helicopters." She puts on her coat.

"May as well," I say. "I've been in a lot of unfamiliar airspace today. I guess a little more isn't going to matter."

THE RUDE JOKE FOR YEARS HAS BEEN THAT VIR-ginians go to New York for art and New Yorkers come to Virginia for garbage. Mayor Giuliani almost started another civil war when he made that snipe during his much-publicized war with Jim Gilmore, Virginia's governor at the time, over Manhattan's right to ship megatons of northern trash to our southern landfills. I can only imagine the reaction when word gets out that now we have to go to New York for justice, too. As long as I have been the chief medical examiner of Virginia, Jaime Berger has been the head of the sex crimes unit for the district attorney's office in Manhattan. Although we have never met, we are often mentioned together. It is said that I am the most famous female forensic pathologist in the country and she is the most famous female prosecutor. Until now, the only reaction I might have had to such a claim is that I don't want to be famous and don't trust people who are, and female should not be an adjective. Nobody talks about successful men in terms of a male doctor or male president or male CEO.

Over the past few days, I have spent hours on Anna's computer researching Berger on the Internet. I resisted being impressed but can't help it. I didn't know, for example, that she is a Rhodes scholar or that after Clinton was elected she was short-listed for attorney general and, according to Time magazine, was privately relieved when Janet Reno was appointed instead. Berger didn't want to give up prosecuting cases. Supposedly, she has turned down judgeships and staggering offers from private law firms for the same reason, and is so admired by her peers that they established a public service scholarship in her name at Harvard, where she spent her undergraduate years. Strangely, very little is said about her personal life except that she plays tennis_extremely well, of course. She works out with a trainer three mornings a week at a New York athletic club and runs three or four miles a day. Her favorite restaurant is Primola. I take some comfort in the fact that she likes Italian food.

It is now Wednesday, early evening, and Lucy and I are Christmas shopping. I have browsed and purchased as much as I can stomach, my mind poisoned by worries, my arm itching like mad inside its plaster cocoon, my craving for tobacco akin to lust. Lucy is somewhere inside Regency Mall taking care of her own list, and I search for a spot where I might evade the churning herd. Thousands of people have waited until three days before Christmas to find thoughtful, special gifts for those significant people in their lives. Voices and constant motion combine in a steady roar that shorts out thoughts and normal conversation, and piped-in holiday music jars my already vibrating nerves out of phase. I face plate glass in front of Sea Dream Leather, my back to discordant people who, like unskilled fingers on a piano, rush and stop and force without joy. Pressing my cell phone tight against my ear, I yield to a new addiction. I check my voice mail for what must be the tenth time today. It has become my slender, secret connection to my former existence. Tapping into my messages is the only way I can go home.

There are four calls. Rose, my secretary, checked in to see how I am holding up. My mother left a long complaint about life. AT amp;T customer service tried to reach me about a billing question, and my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, needs to talk to me. I call him right away.

"I can hardly hear you," his scratchy voice sounds in one ear, my hand covering the other. In the background, one of his children is crying.

"I'm not in a good place to talk," I tell him.

"Me, either. My ex is here. Joy to the world."

"What's up?" I say to him.

"Some New York prosecutor just called me."

Jolted, I will myself to sound calm, almost indifferent, when I ask him this person's name. He tells me Jaime Berger reached him at home several hours ago. She wanted to know if he assisted in the autopsies I performed on Kim Luong and Diane Bray. "That's interesting," I comment. "Isn't your number unlisted?"

"Righter gave it to her," he informs me.

Paranoia heats up. The wound of betrayal flares. Righter gave her Jack's number and not mine? "Why didn't he tell her to call me?" I ask.

Jack pauses as another child adds to the upset chorus in his house. "I don't know. I told her I didn't officially assist. You did the posts. I'm not listed on the protocols as a witness. Said she really needs to speak to you."

"What was her response when you told her that?" I ask.

"Started asking me questions, obviously has copies of the reports."

Righter again. Copies of the medical examiner's initial report of investigation and the autopsy protocols go to the commonwealth's attorney's office. I feel dizzy. It now seems that two prosecutors have spurned me, and fear and bewilderment gather like an army of fiery ants, teeming over my interior world, stinging my very psyche. What is happening is uncanny and cruel. It is beyond anything I have ever imagined in my most unsettled moments. Jack's voice sounds distant through static that seems a projection of the chaos in my mind. I make out that Berger was a very cool customer and sounded as if she was on a car phone, and then something about special prosecutors. "I thought they were only brought in for the president or Waco or whatever," he says as the cell suddenly clears and he yells_to his ex-wife, I assume_"Can you take them in the other room? I'm on the phone! Jesus," he blurts out to me, "don't ever have kids."

"What do you mean, special prosecutor!" I inquire. "What special prosecutor?"

Jack pauses. "I guess I'm assuming they're bringing her here to try the case because Fighter Righter doesn't want to," he replies with sudden nervousness. In fact, he sounds evasive.

"It appears they had a case in New York." I am careful what I say. "That's why she's involved, or so I'm told."

"You mean a case like ours?"

"Two years ago."

"No shit? News to me. Okay. She didn't say anything about that. Just wants to know about the ones here," Jack tells me.

"How many for the morning, so far?" I inquire about our case load for tomorrow.

"Five so far. Including a weirdo one that's going to be a pain in the butt. Young white male_maybe Hispanic_found inside a motel room. Looks like the room was torched. No ID. A needle stuck in his arm, so we don't know if he's a drug OD or smoke inhalation."

"Let's not talk about it over a cell phone," I cut him off, looking around me. "We'll talk about it in the morning. I'll take care of him."

A long, surprised pause is followed by, "You sure? Because I…"

"I'm sure, Jack." I have not been to the office at all this week. "See you then."

I am supposed to meet Lucy in front of Waldenbooks at seven-thirty, and I venture back out into the churning herd. I have no sooner parked myself at the appointed spot when I notice a familiar, big, sour-looking man riding up the escalator. Marino bites into a soft pretzel and licks his fingers as he stares at the teenage girl one step above him. Her tight jeans and sweater leave no mysteries about her curves, dips and elevations, and even from this distance, I can tell Marino is mapping her routes and imagining what it would be like to travel them.

I watch him carried along crowded steps of steel, heavily involved with the pretzel, chewing with his mouth open, lusting. Faded, baggy blue jeans ride below his swollen gut, and his big hands look like baseball mitts protruding from the sleeves of a red NASCAR windbreaker. A NASCAR cap covers his balding head and he wears ridiculous Elvis-size wire-rim glasses. His fleshy face is furrowed by discontent and has the slack, flushed look of chronic dissipation, and I am startled by an awareness of how miserable he is in his own body, of how much he wars against flesh that by now fails him with a vengeance. Marino reminds me of someone who has taken terrible care of his car, driving it hard, letting it rust and fall apart, and then violently hating it. I imagine Marino slamming down the hood and kicking the tires.